International Theatre Conference: Directing and Authorship in Western Drama

Panel One
Friday, October 24th, 9-10:30am

Sarah Ferguson, U of British Columbia
Abstract: Embedded Social Structures:Ignorance is not Bliss; It is Dangerous

Directors do not have any responsibility to a playwright. The playwright is an artist who chooses to share her/his work just as other artists - painters, novelists, composers - do. Embedded in the idea of sharing is a relinquishing of ownership. What is shared is no longer the property of a single person; it becomes an entity unto itself that can be used by any individual for her/his own interpretive exploration. The author will have her/his own intension and vision about their work, but it does not follow that their idea is, or should be, the only one. Art exists through an interpretive audience: the creator and/or the witnesses of the creation. It is an act of community, of inter-relationship, and not of possession.

There are many reasons for looking beyond solely authorial intent. One is the need to acknowledge the cultural and social structures inherent in any creative work that even the originator may not recognize because they are so deeply entrenched. In the case of dramatic realism, for example, the wish to present 'reality' (certainly a contested term) on stage obscures the construction of that reality. This does not just mean the construction of the play's reality, but also the construction of society's reality that is then re-enforced through repetition in the play.

In the study of gender construction, Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Teresa de Lauretis in Technologies of Gender both articulate ideas which share an awareness of the concepts of repetition, representation, and presumed transparency. It is through a repetition of a specific representation that gender, in this case, is constructed. It is through this repeated representation that the fact that gender itself is a construction is shrouded.
Marvin Carlson in The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine approaches the same idea from another perspective: the occurrence of "ghosting". While he is not referring to gender particularly, he is voicing a comparable concept to that of Butler and de Lauretis. He integrates the idea of repetition, which he calls ghosting, in the development of drama: "every one of the world's great dramatic traditions has stressed from the outset the importance not of telling stories on stage but of retelling stories that are already known to their public" (18, emphasis added). Theatre can function as an arena for repeating a representation that masks the construction of the perspective offered under a cloak of truth.

These concepts of repetition, representation, and feigned transparency can be explored through the titular character of a canonical play in the realist tradition: Hedda from Hedda Gabler. This play is not only a mainstay of the theatrical cannon, but an illustration of traditionally negative behaviors for women which contribute to, and some would argue demand, her death. Hedda becomes a ghostly reminder of the perils of transgressive action. Thus, she functions to support social normativity even though it is often argued that Ibsen's intention was to expose society's rigidity. Therefore, while Ibsen may have envisioned a play which exposes the unyielding cultural expectations brought to bear on women in his time, he unintentional provided a cautionary tale about what will happen to women who do not conform to the expectations.

A contemporary production of Hedda Gabler that explores this idea of construction through repetitive representation may not have any seeming connection to Ibsen's actual intent or his theorized intent. However, it is still a legitimate interpretation because elements of this theory can clearly be seen within the text itself whether intentional or not. As our understanding and theorizing explores new avenues, it is only natural that there can be a connection to a work of art that the artist might not have intended. Should that be a reason to ignore it?